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Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright, the greatest exponent of Hispanic literature, and one of the greatest authors of universal literature. O Engenhoso Cavalheiro Dom Quixote de La Mancha (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha), published in 1605, is his most famous work and is considered the first modern novel in Western history.
Cervantes' literature is part of the so-called Spanish Golden Age (16th-17th centuries), a moment of splendor in Hispanic literature, and includes long and short novels, poems, and dramaturgical pieces. The importance and uniqueness of his work were such that he was often given the title of “prince of intelligence.”
Miguel de Cervantes was a soldier, prisoner, tax collector, and successful writer, but little documentary information about his early life was preserved, creating large gaps that were never filled. As a soldier, he participated in the struggle of European Catholic powers against the Ottoman Empire during the 16th century.
The birth and ancestry of Miguel de Cervantes is a source of investigation and debate. Religious documents from the time and writings by the author himself are preserved, but there are many doubts about where and when exactly he was born, and in what socioeconomic family context. The majority opinion says that he was born on September 29, 1547, in Alcalá de Henares, a city near Madrid and that he was baptized on October 9, 1547, in the church of Santa Maria la Mayor, in Alcalá.
The family history begins with Juan de Cervantes (b. 1490), the author's grandfather, a lawyer who once administered the properties of the Duke of Osuna, and later resided in Córdoba, where he died around 1555. Miguel was the third of the five living children of the marriage of Rodrigo de Cervantes with Leonor de Cortinas. In addition to Miguel, the couple had six other children: Andrés, Andrea, Luisa, Rodrigo, Magdalena, and Juan.
Miguel de Cervantes struggled to support himself financially for almost his entire life. His father, Rodrigo, deaf since birth, worked as a surgeon, a humble job at the time. Although it is sometimes stated that the author had an aristocratic origin, according to the Spanish journalist and Cervante’s scholar Ramón León Máinez (1846-1917), his family belonged to a noble but ruined lineage.
Economic difficulties occurred frequently in the Cervantes household. Impelled by necessity, his father began a continuous pilgrimage. There is evidence that Rodrigo de Cervantes lived in Valladolid (1554), in Madrid (1561), in Seville (1564-1565) and in Madrid (from 1566). Regrettably, he only encountered debt charges that ended up landing him in jail.
Cervantes' Early Life
Whatever his family's financial circumstances, Cervantes was an avid reader as a child, a skill he would have been taught by a relative. But whether he had much formal education has been a subject of debate among scholars. Based on analyzes of Cervantes' later work, some believe that the Jesuits may have taught him, however, others dispute this claim.
His education took place in his hometown and not in Madrid or Salamanca, where nobles usually sent their children to be educated. However, it is not known exactly where and to what extent he studied, but it is known that he did not graduate from University. In 1563 the family went to live in Seville, where he studied grammar and Latin with Jesuit priests.
At this time, he discovered the theater of Lope de la Rueda, from whom he received influence. Around 1564, Rodrigo de Cervantes settled in Seville, managing rental houses. It is believed that young Miguel attended classes at the Jesuit school, until, in 1566, a new move took the family to Madrid.
Grammar professor Juan López de Hoyos, a Madrid teacher and rector of the Estudio de La Villa, who, in 1569, published a work commemorating Philip II's third wife, Isabel de Valois, who died on October 3, 1568. Entitled Historia y relación verdadera de la enfermedad, felicisimo trânsito y sumptuosas exequias fúnebres de la Serenisima Reyna de Españia Doña Isabel de Valoys (History and true relationship of the illness, happy transit, and sumptuous funeral obsequies de la Serenisima Reyna de España Doña Isabel de Valois), the work contains six contributions by Cervantes: a sonnet, four redondillas and an elegy. Lopez de Hoyos introduces Cervantes as “our dear and beloved student,” and the elegy is dedicated to Cardinal Espinosa “in the name of the entire school.”
According to some scholars, these poems constitute Cervantes' first works and a demonstration of the enormous talent he already demonstrated from an early age. It has been deduced that Cervantes was educated by López de Hoyos, but this is untenable, as López de Hoyos' school was only opened in 1567. It is also known that he was a fan of theater and that he attended numerous plays by Lope de Rueda ( 1505- c.1565).
On October 13, 1568, Giulio Acquaviva arrived in Madrid in charge of a special mission to Philip II. He left for Rome on December 2 and Cervantes accompanied him. In 1569, the first of the great unknowns that marked the life trajectory of Miguel de Cervantes emerged. When he was beginning a promising literary career, and without the reasons being known, he traveled to Rome to serve as chamberlain to Cardinal Giulio Acquaviva.
This hypothesis is based solely on a passage from Galatea's dedication, where the writer speaks of having been “chamberlain to Cardinal Acquaviva in Rome.” There is a warrant dated September 15, 1569, for the arrest of a certain Miguel de Cervantes, who wounded Antonio de Sigura, and was sentenced in absentia to have his right hand cut off and to be exiled from the capital for ten years. No evidence is available. All that is known with certainty is that Cervantes was in Rome at the end of 1569, as on December 22 of the same year the fact was recorded in official information presented by Rodrigo de Cervantes with the aim of proving the legitimacy and integrity of his son.
There is, however, no reason to think that Cervantes met Acquaviva in Madrid; the probability is that he enlisted as a supernumerary in late 1568, served in Italy and entered the house of Acquaviva, and was elevated to the cardinalate on May 17, 1570.
In Italy, Cervantes spent some time in the service of Cardinal Acquaviva and accompanied him on his trips to Rome, Palermo, Milan, Florence, Venice, Parma, and Ferrara. There the young author discovered the work of Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1553), especially his chivalric poems, from which he was inspired much later to write Don Quixote.
Military life
If it is difficult to say precisely when Cervantes was in the service of Acquaviva, it is no less difficult to say when he left it to join the regular army. In 1570, Cervantes abandoned his job as a chamberlain and enlisted as a soldier in the Spanish regiment of Naples, which at the time belonged to the Spanish crown.
In 1571 he served as a private in the company commanded by Captain Diego de Urbina, which was part of Miguel de Moncada's famous regiment, and on September 16 he left Messina aboard the ship Marquesa, which was part of the armada led by Don Juan of Austria. (c. 1547-1578).
Battle of Lepanto
In 1571, he participated in the Naval Battle of Lepanto, in Greece, organized by the Holy League, to combat the Turks in the Mediterranean. The Holy League was formed by the Republic of Venice, the Kingdom of Spain (at the time of King Philip II), the Knights of Malta and the Papal States. The Holy League emerged victorious, which represented the end of Islamic expansion in the Mediterranean.
When the fleet went into action, Cervantes was lying down, sick and suffering from a fever. Despite the protests of his comrades, he vehemently insisted on rising to take part in the fight and was placed with twelve men under his command in a boat alongside the galley. He received three bullet wounds, two in the chest and one that permanently mutilated his left hand, to the greater glory of the right, in his own words. A wound of which he was always proud, and which earned him, as if it were a medal, the nickname “the one-armed man of Lepanto.”
On October 30th, the fleet returned to Messina, where Cervantes was hospitalized and during his convalescence he received subsidies worth eighty-two ducats. On April 29, 1572, he was transferred to Captain Manuel Ponce de León's company in Lope de Figueroa's regiment.
He took part in the Naval Combat off Navarino on 7 October 1572; in the capture of Tunis on 10 October 1573 and in the unsuccessful expedition to relieve Goletta in the autumn of 1574. He spent the remainder of his military service in garrison at Palermo and Naples.
Don Juan arrived in Naples on June 18, 1575, and soon after granted him permission to return to Spain with a letter of recommendation to Philip II, in addition to a similar statement from the Duke of Sessa, viceroy of Sicily. With these credentials, Cervantes embarked on the “Sol” galley to promote his claim for promotion in Spain.
Capture, slavery, rescue, and release
On September 26, 1575, near Les Trois Maries, on the coast of Marseille, during the return trip to Spain, the galley Sol in which Cervantes and his brother Rodrigo were traveling, and their companion ships, “Mendoza” and “Higuera”, was intercepted by a Turkish flotilla, commanded by the Albanian privateer Arnaut Mami, and its crew taken prisoner to Algiers. As Cervantes had in his possession several letters of recommendation from Don Juan of Austria, the Turks thought he was an illustrious citizen and asked for five hundred gold crowns for his release.
Escape attempts
Cervantes tried unsuccessfully to escape on four occasions. His family managed to pay for the release of his brother Rodrigo, who returned to Europe with the plan to free his older brother and fourteen other prisoners. Unfortunately, the plan did not come to fruition.
With courage and persistence, he organized escape plans. In 1576, he sent a letter imploring help from Dom Martín de Córdoba, governor of Oram. Cervantes induced a Moor to guide him and other Christian captives to Oram; the Moor abandoned them on the road, and the perplexed fugitives returned to Algiers. Cervantes was treated harshly. He declared himself solely responsible for the plan and was sentenced to receive two thousand lashes, but the punishment was not applied.
A new escape attempt was nothing more than a project and led him to the presence of Hassan Pasha, viceroy of Algiers. Impressed by the prisoner's heroic behavior, Hassan remitted the sentence and, for five hundred crowns, purchased Cervantes from Dali Mami. Cervantes addressed to the Spanish Secretary of State, Mateo Vázquez, a versified letter suggesting that an expedition should be prepared to take Algiers, but the project was not approved.
Family participation in his release
In March 1578, his father presented a petition to the king exposing Cervantes' services; the Duke of Sessa repeated his testimony of the captive's merits. In the spring of 1579, Cervantes' mother requested a license to export goods worth two thousand ducats from Valencia to Algiers, and on July 31, 1579, she gave the Trinitarian monks Juan Gil and Antón de la Bella a sum of two thousand cent and fifty ducats for the ransom of his son.
At the end of 1579, Cervantes obtained a frigate; but the plot was revealed to Hassan by Juan Blanco de Paz, a Dominican monk, who seems to have conceived an inexplicable hatred for Cervantes. Once again, the conspirator's life was spared by Hassan who declared that “as long as he kept the mutilated Spaniard in custody, his Christians, ships and city would be safe.”
Ransom payment
Finally, in September 1580, Cervantes' ransom was paid by Friar Juan Gil, who collected it from Christian merchants. Along with other Spanish captives, Cervantes returned to Spain in October of that year. Cervantes was already embarked for Constantinople when the money was paid on May 29 or September 19, 1580.
The two Trinidadians arrived in Algiers almost at the last minute as Hassan's term was expiring and any rescue agreement was a slow process, involving much negotiation. Hassan refused to accept less than five hundred gold ducats for his slave. The available funds fell short of this amount and the balance was collected from Christian merchants in Algiers.
On October 27th, he disembarked in Dénia (Alicante) and in November he headed to Madrid. He signed a declaration before a notary in that city on December 18, 1580. His captivity had lasted five years and one month and was perpetuated in his work Los baños de Argel (The baths of Algiers) and in the story El prisionero (The Prisoner), included in Don Quixote. The first use he made of his freedom was to request sworn statements of his proceedings in Algiers.
These dates prove that he cannot, as is often claimed, have served under Alva in the Portuguese campaign of 1580. That campaign ended with the Battle of Alcântara on 25 August 1580. It seems certain, however, that he visited Portugal shortly after his return from Algiers, and in May 1581 he was sent from Thomar on a mission to Oram.
Everything indicates that, upon returning to Spain, Cervantes was confident that his military merits would reward him with a public position, but that was not what happened. There is only evidence that, in 1581, he went to Oram, on an unknown mission and then to Lisbon to report on the same to the government of Philip II.
In the same year, after a stay with his family in Madrid, Cervantes went to Portugal, where the court of King Philip II was located, with the intention of rebuilding his life and eventually paying off the debt incurred by his family. He even applied for a job in the West Indies the following year but was not successful.
The stories of his residence in Portugal and his love affairs with a noble Portuguese lady who bore him a daughter are simple fabrications. From 1582-3 to 1587 Cervantes appears to have written copiously for the stage, and in Adjunta al Parnaso (Attached to Parnassus) mentions several of his plays as “worthy of praise”; they were Los Tratos de Argel (The Algiers Deals) , La Numancia (The Numancia), La Gran Turquesa (La Gran Turquoise), La Batalla Naval (The Naval Battle), La Jerusalem (The Jerusalem), La Amaranta o La de Mayo (La Amaranta or That of May), El Bosque Amoroso (The Amorous Grove) y La Unica y Bizarra Ársinda (The Unique and Bizarre Ársinda).
Andalusia, Seville, Valladolid
Although there is not much information about Cervantes' whereabouts between 1582 and 1583, we do know of his love affair with Ana Villafranca de Rojas, a married woman with whom he had a daughter, Isabel de Saavedra. In 1584 he returned to Spain.
In Madrid he obtained a public position and began writing La Galatea, a pastoral novel and his first important literary work, published in Alcalá de Henares in 1585. La Galatea was divided into six books, of which Cervantes wrote only the first part. He established contact with literati of the time such as Luís de Gongora and Lope de Vega. He wrote the dramatic poems Los Tratos de Argel and La Numancia.
In 1584, he married Catalina de Salazar y Palacios. It was not a happy marriage. After two years, without having children, Cervantes undertook a series of extensive trips through Andalusia. Finally, in 1588, he decided to settle in Seville, away from his wife, where he served as royal commissioner of supplies. He was entrusted by the king as commissioner of food for the armadas and fleets that headed to the Indies, going to live in Seville.
His duties as commissioner forced him to conduct unpleasant tasks such as seizing oil and grain in rural communities. When many did not want to provide the necessary goods, Cervantes was accused of mismanagement and ended up in prison.
Furthermore, they exposed him to accusations of corruption in 1592, from which his innocence was proven. In 1597, he spent a brief period in prison, following the bankruptcy of the bank where he deposited certain customs charges for the kingdom of Granada. It was during this difficult period that he began writing some of literature's greatest masterpieces.
Later, he was appointed collector of taxes owed to the Crown of the kingdoms of Granada, which forced him to travel frequently to Andalusia and La Mancha. Because of delays in reporting to the Crown, Cervantes was arrested three times. Some historians say that the first part of the book "Don Quixote" was written while he was imprisoned in Argamasilla del Alba, between 1601 and 1603. The fatality, however, settled within his family
In 1593, his mother died and, in 1600, his brother Rodrigo also died in the Battle of the Dunes. Shortly afterwards, in 1604, while finishing the writing of Don Quixote, he settled in Valladolid with his sisters Andrea and Magdalena, his daughter Isabel and a servant called María de Ceballos.
Interpreted literally, a formal declaration of his services, signed by Cervantes on May 21, 1590, makes it appear that he served in the Azores campaigns of 1582-83; but the wording of the document is not clear, Cervantes' claims are confused with those of his brother Rodrigo (who was promoted to ensign in the Azores). Therefore, it is doubtful whether he participated in any of the expeditions under Santa Cruz.
Some biographers explain that Cervantes returned to prison between 1602 and 1603, but there is no documentation to prove this. It is also debated whether it was in the prison of Algiers or the prison of Seville that Cervantes really had the ideas for what would later become Don Quixote. In any case, in 1604 Cervantes said goodbye to Seville and moved to Valladolid, where he lived with his wife, sisters, nieces and natural daughter.
No kindness descended upon Cervantes' domestic life. A stabbing incident in the street outside the Valladolid house in June 1605 ridiculously led to the arrest of the entire family. Later, when they followed the court to Madrid, he continued to be tormented by money disputes and now, also, by domestic difficulties. The family lived on several streets over the next few years before finally settling on Calle de León.
Dom Quixote Publications
In July or August 1604, Cervantes sold the rights to El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha) known as Don Quixote, Part I, to bookseller-publisher Francisco de Robles for an unknown sum. The license for publication was granted in September and the book appeared in January 1605. There is some evidence that its contents were known before publication by, among others, Lope de Vega, whose vicissitudes of relations with Cervantes were then at a low point. It is now known that the composers at Juan de la Cuesta's publishing house in Madrid were responsible for many errors in the text, many of which were long attributed to the author.
The sale of publishing rights, however, meant that Cervantes no longer made a financial profit on Part I of his novel. He had to do the best he could with sponsorship. The dedication to the young Duke of Béjar was a mistake. He had better luck with two much more influential people: the Count of Lemos, to whom he would dedicate Part II and no less than three other works, and Dom Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas, archbishop of Toledo.
This eased his financial situation a little. However, he would like to have a more secure place in the pantheon of the country's writers than he ever achieved during his lifetime – he wanted a reputation comparable to that of Lope de Vega or the poet Luis de Góngora, for example. His sense of his own marginal position can be deduced from his Viage del Parnaso (1614), two or three of the later prefaces, and some external sources.
However, relative success, still unfulfilled ambition, and a restless desire to experiment with fictional forms ensured that, at the age of fifty-seven, with less than a dozen years remaining, he was entering the most productive period of his career.
Like several other writers of the time, Cervantes harbored hopes of an appointment as secretary to the Count of Lemos when, in 1610, the count was appointed Viceroy of Naples; once again Cervantes was disappointed. In 1609 he joined a fashionable religious order, the Esclavos del Santísimo Sacramento (Slaves of the Blessed Sacrament), and four years later he became a tertiary Franciscan, which was a more serious commitment.
Cervantes' students also know of a growing involvement in the capital's literary life, through his attendance at the Academia Selvaje, a kind of writers' salon, in 1612. It is not known exactly when Cervantes began writing Part II of Don Quixote , but he was probably no more than halfway through at the end of July 1614.
Around September, a spurious Part II was published in Tarragona by someone calling himself Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, an unidentified Aragonese who was an admirer of Lope de Vega. The book has merit, although it is crude in comparison to its model. In the prologue, the author gratuitously insulted Cervantes, who, not surprisingly, took offense and responded, although with relative moderation compared to the insults of some literary rivalries of the time. He also incorporated some criticisms of Fernández de Avellaneda and his “pseudo” Quixote and Sancho into his own fiction from chapter 59 onwards.
Dom Quixote, Part II, came out of the same press as its predecessor in late 1615. It was quickly reprinted in Brussels and Valencia in 1616 and in Lisbon in 1617. Parts I and II first appeared in an edition in Barcelona in 1617. There was a French translation of Part II in 1618 and an English one in 1620. The second part capitalizes on the potential of the first, developing and diversifying without sacrificing familiarity. Most people agree that it is richer and deeper.
In his later years, Cervantes mentioned several works that apparently did not reach the press if he began writing them. There was Bernardo (the name of a legendary Spanish epic hero), the Garden Weeks (collection of short stories, perhaps like Boccaccio's Decameron), and the continuation of his Galatea.
His last novel, Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (The works of Persiles and Sigismunda), historia setentrional, was published posthumously in 1617. In its Cervantes sought to renew the heroic romance of adventure and love in the manner of Ethiopics, by Heliodorus. It was a genre of intellectual prestige destined to be highly successful in 17th century France. Intended to both edify and entertain, Persiles is an ambitious work that explores the mythic and symbolic potential of romance. It was remarkably successful when it appeared; there were eight Spanish editions in two years and French and English translations in 1618 and 1619, respectively.
Cervantes' last years
Between the appearance of the first and second volumes of Don Quixote, Cervantes published other important works, such as Romances Exemplares (Exemplary Romances – 1613), Viaje del Parnaso (Journey from Parnassus -1614) and Ocho comedias y ocho nuevos aperitivos nunca presentados (Eight comedies and eight new aperitifs never presented - 1615). By this time, Cervantes had already moved with his family to Madrid, where the royal court was transferred. His family world has also changed. His sisters Andrea and Magdalena died in 1609 and 1611 respectively, and his daughter Isabel married, became a widow, and remarried.
Although his literary works were already widely circulated at that time, Cervantes failed in his attempts to enter the court and accompany the Count of Lemos, Pedro Fernández de Castro y Andrade (1576-1622), newly appointed viceroy of Naples. Not even in his final years, Cervantes was able to escape economic difficulties.
These last years are the best documented about his life. He lived withdrawn in his home, dedicated to prayer and literature and closer to his wife than he had ever been. On the 19th of that same month, seriously ill, he dedicated his last book, Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda to the Count of Lemos, making the verses his own: “Puesto ya el pie en el estribo, / con las ansias de la muerte, / Grand señor, I write to you" (Having put my foot in the stirrup, / with the desire for death, / Grand lord, I write to you).
The Death of Cervantes
Cervantes was not destined to see it in print. In April 1616, he contracted dropsy, a disease that affects the patient's inner ear, causing varied symptoms ranging from dizziness and vertigo to hearing-related problems such as hearing loss or deafness.
On April 18, 1616, he received the sacrament of extreme unction; the next day he wrote the dedication of Persiles y Sigismunda to the Count of Lemos — the most moving and gallant of farewells. In the dedication, written three days before he died, Cervantes, “con el pie ya en el estribo” (with his foot already in the stirrup), said a moving goodbye to the world. With a lucid mind to the end, he seems to have achieved a final serenity of spirit.
The prologue to Persiles was his literary testament. He died in Madrid, on Calle del León, almost certainly on April 22 or 23, 1616. He was 68 years old and diabetic. He was removed from his home with his face uncovered and in the Franciscan habit, according to the rule of the Tertiaries of São Francisco, and on April 24th he was buried in the church attached to the convent of the Trinitarian nuns on Calle de Las Cantarranas.
The burial certificate indicates that the latter was the day he was buried, in the convent of the Trinitários Descalços on Calle de Las Cantarranas (today Calle de Lope de Vega). The exact location is not marked. No will be known to have survived.
The story of his remains being removed to Calle del Humilladero in 1633 is unsubstantiated, but the exact position of his tomb is unknown. The lack of resources forced the confreres of the Venerable Tercera Orden de San Francisco (Venerable Third Order of Saint Francis) to pay for the writer's funeral. Months later, Catarina, his widow, managed the publication of Persiles.
In early 1617, Persiles y Sigismunda was published and went through eight editions in two years; but interest in it soon faded and it was not reprinted between 1625 and 1719. Cervantes' wife died without issue on 31 October 1626; her natural daughter, who survived her son from her first marriage and her second husband, died on September 20, 1652. Cervantes is represented only by his works.
Only the copies of the Novels would give him a prominent place among Spanish novelists; Don Quixote gives him the right to be among the greatest writers of all time: “children turn the pages, young people read, grown men understand, old people praise.” It has survived all changes in literary taste and is even more popular today than it was three centuries ago.
Cervantes' literary legacy
Cervantes' work is part of the universal literary legacy, and his works are being studied and republished. Don Quixote is, after the Bible, the most translated and edited book in history, and has been widely studied by international intellectuals, such as Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), Gyorgy Lukács (1885-1971) or Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986 ).
Cervantes is considered today the great author of Hispanic culture and the creator of the modern novel and polyphonic novel. The polyphonic novel involves a multiplicity of consciousnesses, of characters who dialogue with each other and with their author-creator. The monological novel involves a single consciousness, the author's consciousness, to which all the characters' other consciousnesses are subordinate.
His works, of enormous originality, cover the genres of poetry, romance and dramaturgy, and even literary criticism. Cervantes successfully cultivated the aperitif, comedy, pastoral romance, and other genres of the time.
Cervantes' names also accompany the highest literary award in the Spanish language, awarded annually by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sports since 1976. In addition, there are monuments in his honor throughout the world. It is quite common for institutes, schools, theaters, cinemas, and other cultural spaces to bear his name. The day of his death, April 23, is celebrated as Book Day in almost all Western nations.
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